3Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Sciences, University of Isfahan, Isfahan 81746-73441, Iran.

Abstract

The great demand of people for consumption of natural additives resulted in producing natural vanillin. There are plant sources and chemical procedures for vanillin production but microbial bioconversions are being sought as a suitable alternative. In the present work, the ability to produce vanillin from isoeugenol was screened using growing cultures of various bacteria. Among the 56 strains of bacteria isolated from the soil environments of Iran, a Gram-negative rod designated as strain ISPC2 showed the capability of promoting the formation of high amounts of vanillin when grown in the presence of isoeugenol. On the basis of morphological and physiochemical characteristics and 16S ribosomal ribonucleic acid (rRNA) gene sequence analysis, the isolate was identified as Pseudomonas aeruginosa ISPC2. Vanillin formation was analyzed by GC/FID. In the presence of isoeugenol, a growing culture of P. aeruginosa ISPC2 produced 1.62 gL-1 vanillin (molar yield of 17.3%) after a 72 h reaction at 30°C and 200 rpm. This proposed procedure is an alternative approach to obtain vanillin in an environmentally friendly way. Further studies for standardization and optimization for higher yield of vanillin production, needs to be investigated.